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1.
Regular script
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Regular script, also called 正楷, 真書, 楷體 and 正書, is the newest of the Chinese script styles, hence most common in modern writings and publications. Regular script came into being between the Eastern Hàn and Cáo Wèi dynasties, and its first known master was Zhōng Yáo and he is known as the “father of regular script”, and his famous works include the Xuānshì Biǎo, Jiànjìzhí Biǎo, and Lìmìng Biǎo. Qiu Xigui describes the script in Zhong’s Xuānshì Biǎo as, …clearly emerging from the womb of early period semi-cursive script. However, other than a few literati, very few wrote in this script at the time, most continued writing in neo-clerical script, or a form of semi-cursive. Thus, regular script has parentage in early semi-cursive as well as neo-clerical scripts and those in between are usually called medium regular script, or zhongkai. What these are relative to other characters, the Eight Principles of Yong are said to contain a variety of most of the strokes found in regular script. The most common printed typeface styles Ming and sans-serif are based on the structure of regular script, the Japanese textbook typefaces are based on regular script, but modified so that they appear to be written with a pencil or pen. They also follow the character forms prescribed in the Jōyō kanji. Zhuyin Fuhao characters, although not true Chinese characters, are always written with regular script strokes. Translation of 文字學概論 by Mattos and Norman, Early China Special Monograph Series No.4. Berkeley, The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, regular Script tao te king CHAPTER LVII More on Standard Script In English, at BeyondCalligraphy. com

2.
Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French

3.
Old Chinese
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Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including works such as the Analects, the Mencius. These works served as models for Literary Chinese, which remained the standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary. Old Chinese was written with a form of Chinese characters. Although the script is not alphabetic, most characters were created by adapting a character for a similar-sounding word. Most recent reconstructions also describe Old Chinese as a language without tones, but having consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, most researchers trace the core vocabulary of Old Chinese to Sino-Tibetan, with much early borrowing from neighbouring languages. During the Zhou period, the originally monosyllabic vocabulary was augmented with polysyllabic words formed by compounding, several derivational affixes have also been identified. However the language lacked inflection, and indicated grammatical relationships using word order, the earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at the Yinxu site near modern Anyang identified as the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1250 BC. These are the bones, short inscriptions carved on tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes. The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to due to the limited subject matter. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty, little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese. From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest parts of the Book of Documents, the Classic of Poetry and the I Ching also date from the early Zhou period, a greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period. The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense, there are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by a rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden slips and silk. Although these are perishable materials, and many books were destroyed in the burning of books and burying of scholars in the Qin dynasty, other texts have been transmitted as copies. Such works from this period as the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Mencius, the Classical Chinese of such works formed the basis of Literary Chinese, which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century. Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese word, most scholars believe that these words were monosyllabic, though some have recently suggested that a minority of them had minor presyllables

4.
Han dynasty
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The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han, and briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang. This interregnum separates the Han dynasty into two periods, the Western Han or Former Han and the Eastern Han or Later Han, the emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States, from the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu. This policy endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 AD, the Han dynasty was an age of economic prosperity and saw a significant growth of the money economy first established during the Zhou dynasty. The coinage issued by the government mint in 119 BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty. The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations, the Xiongnu, a nomadic steppe confederation, defeated the Han in 200 BC and forced the Han to submit as a de facto inferior partner, but continued their raids on the Han borders. Emperor Wu of Han launched several campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries, the territories north of Hans borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Imperial authority was seriously challenged by large Daoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion. When Cao Pi, King of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian, following Liu Bangs victory in the Chu–Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief. Chinas first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty, the Qin unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their empire became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Within four years, the authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion. Although Xiang Yu proved to be a commander, Liu Bang defeated him at Battle of Gaixia. Liu Bang assumed the title emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu, Changan was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han

5.
Hakka Chinese
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Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Yue, Wu, Southern Min, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintellegible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan and is classified as a variety of Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features, Taiwan, where Hakka is the native language of a significant minority of the islands residents, is a center for the study and preservation of the language. Pronunciation differences exist between the Taiwanese Hakka dialects and Mainland Chinas Hakka dialects, even in Taiwan, two local varieties of Hakka exist. The Meixian dialect of northeast Guangdong in China has been taken as the dialect by the Peoples Republic of China. The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created a romanization of Moiyen in 1960. The name of the Hakka people who are the predominant original native speakers of the variety literally means guest families or guest people, Hak 客 means guest, and ka 家 means family. Among themselves, Hakka people variously called their language Hak-ka-fa 客家話, Hak-fa, 客話, Tu-gong-dung-fa 土廣東話, literally Native Guangdong language, and Ngai-fa 我話, My/our language. The forebears of the Hakka came from present-day Central Plains provinces of Henan and Shaanxi, the presence of many archaic features occur in modern Hakka, including final consonants -p -t -k, as are found in other modern southern Chinese varieties, but which have been lost in Mandarin. Due to the migration of its speakers, Hakka may have influenced by other language areas through which the Hakka-speaking forebears migrated. For instance, common vocabulary is found in Hakka, Min, in recent times, many She people have become Hakka speakers. A regular pattern of change can generally be detected in Hakka, as in most Chinese varieties. Some examples, Characters such as 武 or 屋, are pronounced roughly mwio and uk in Early Middle Chinese, have an initial v phoneme in Hakka, being vu and vuk in Hakka respectively. Like in Mandarin, labiodentalisation process also changed mj- to a sound in Hakka before grave vowels. Middle Chinese initial phonemes /ɲ/ of the characters 人 and 日, among others, for comparison, in Mandarin, /ɲ/ became r-, while in Cantonese, it merged with initial /j/. The initial consonant phoneme exhibited by the character 話 is pronounced f or v in Hakka, the initial consonant of 學 hɔk usually corresponds with an h approximant in Hakka and a voiceless alveo-palatal fricative in Mandarin. Hakka has as many regional dialects as there are counties with Hakka speakers as the majority, some of these Hakka dialects are not mutually intelligible with each other. Surrounding Meixian are the counties of Pingyuan, Dabu, Jiaoling, Xingning, Wuhua, each is said to have its own special phonological points of interest

6.
Teochew dialect
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Teochew is a variety of Southern Min spoken mainly by the Teochew people in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong and by their respective diaspora around the world. It is sometimes referred to as Chiuchow, its Cantonese name, Teochew preserves many Old Chinese pronunciations and vocabulary that have been lost in some of the other modern varieties of Chinese. As such, many linguists consider Teochew one of the most conservative Chinese dialects, Teochew is a member of the Southern Min subgroup, which in turn constitutes a part of Min Chinese, one of the seven major language groups of Chinese. Even within the Teochew dialects, there is variation in phonology between different regions of Chaoshan and between different Teochew communities overseas. Parts of the Hakka-speaking regions of Jiexi County, Dabu County and Fengshun, as Chaoshan was one of the major sources of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia during the 18th to 20th centuries, a considerable Overseas Chinese community in that region is Teochew-speaking. In particular, the Teochew people settled in significant numbers in Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, teochew-speakers form a minority among Chinese communities in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Teochew was never popular in Chinese communities in Japan and South Korea, since most of the Teochew people who migrated to these countries are secondary immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Most of them are people from Hong Kong and Taiwan who speak Cantonese, Hokkien and Mandarin, as well as Korean and Japanese. This refers to Chaozhou, the variety of Teochew spoken in China, Chaozhou children are introduced to Standard Chinese as early as in kindergarten, however, Chaozhou remains the primary medium of instruction. In the early years of education, Mandarin becomes the sole language of instruction. Mandarin is widely understood, however minimally, by most younger Chaozhou speakers, native Chaozhou speakers find the neutral tone in Mandarin hardest to master. Chaozhou has lost the alveolar nasal ending and so the people often replace the sound in Mandarin with the velar nasal, none of the southern Min dialects have a front rounded vowel, therefore a typical Chaozhou accent supplants the unrounded counterpart for. Chaozhou, like its ancient ancestor, lacks labio-dentals, people therefore substitute or for when they speak Mandarin, Chaozhou does not have any of the retroflex consonants in the northern dialects, so they pronounce, and instead of, and. Since Chaoan, Raoping and Jieyang border the Hakka-speaking region in the north, some people in these regions speak Hakka, Chaozhou people have historically had a great deal of contact with the Hakka people, but Hakka has had little, if any, influence on Chaozhou. Similarly, in Dabu and Fengshun, where the Chaozhou- and Hakka-speaking regions meet, in the mountainous area of Fenghuang, the She language, an endangered Hmong–Mien language, is spoken by the She people, who are an officially-recognised non-Han ethnic minority. They predominantly speak Hakka and Teochew, only about 1,000 She still speak their eponymous language, the voiced stops and and also are voicelessly prenasalised, respectively. They are in distribution with the tenuis stops, occurring before nasal vowels and nasal codas, whereas the tenuis stops occur before oral vowels. The voiced affricate dz, initial in such words as 字, 二, 然, 若 loses its affricate property with some younger speakers abroad, and is relaxed to

7.
Gan Chinese
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Gan is a member of the Sinitic languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and Hakka is the closest Chinese variety to Gan in terms of phonetics. Different dialects of Gan exist, the Nanchang dialect is taken as representative. Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is an amount of mutual unintelligibility between Gan Chinese and other varieties. Within the variation of Chinese dialects, Gan has more similarities with Mandarin than with Yue or Min, scholars in mainland China use Gan or Gan dialect. Jiāngxī huà is commonly used in Chinese, but since the borders of the language do not follow the borders of the province, this name is not geographically exact. Xi, an ancient name, now used, arising from the fact that most Gan speakers live south of the Yangtze River. Most Gan speakers live in the middle and lower reaches of the Gan River, the area of the Fu River. There are also many Gan speakers living in eastern Hunan, eastern Hubei, southern Anhui, northwest Fujian, in the early years of the Han Dynasty, Nanchang was established as the capital of the Yuzhang Commandery, along with the 18 counties of Jiangxi Province. The population of the Yuzhang Commandery increased to 1,670,000 from 350,000, the Yuzhang Commandery ranked fourth in population among the more than 100 contemporary commanderies of China. As the largest commandery of Yangzhou, Yuzhang accounted for two fifths of the population and Gan gradually took shape during this period, as a result of continuous warfare in the region of central China, the first large-scale emigration in the history of China took place. Large numbers of people in central China relocated to southern China in order to escape the bloodshed and at this time, also, during this period, ancient Gan began to be exposed to the northern Mandarin dialects. After centuries of rule by the Southern Dynasties, Gan still retained many original characteristics despite having absorbed some elements of Mandarin, up until the Tang Dynasty, there was little difference between old Gan and the contemporary Gan of that era. During this period, following hundreds of years of migration, Gan spread to its current areas of distribution, Guanhua evolved into a standard language based on Beijing Mandarin, owing largely to political factors. At the same time, the differences between Gan and Guan-hua continued to more pronounced. However, because Jiangxi borders on Jianghuai, a Guanhua, Xiang, after 1949, as a dialect in Mainland China, Gan faced a critical period. The impact of Mandarin is quite evident today as a result of governmental language campaigns. Currently, many youths are unable to master Gan expressions, there are differences within the Gan speaking region. For example, in Anfu county, which was categorized as Ji-Cha, people from one region cannot even understand people from the other region if they were not well educated or exposed to the other dialects

8.
Chinese surname
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Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames existed, namely xing or lineage names, and shi or clan names, Chinese family names are patrilineal, passed from father to children. Women do not normally change their surnames upon marriage, except in places with more Western influences such as Hong Kong, traditionally Chinese surnames have been exogamous. The colloquial expressions laobaixing and bǎixìng are used in Chinese to mean ordinary folks, prior to the Warring States period, only the ruling families and the aristocratic elite had surnames. Historically there was also a difference between clan names or xing and lineages names or shi, Xing were surnames held by the noble clans. They generally are composed of a nü radical which has taken by some as evidence they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. Another hypothesis has been proposed by sinologist Léon Vandermeersch upon observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the Shang dynasty through the Zhou, the female radical seems to appear at the Zhou period next to Shang sinograms indicating an ethnic group or a tribe. This combination seems to designate specifically a female and could mean lady of such or such clan, prior to the Qin Dynasty China was largely a fengjian society. In this way, a nobleman would hold a shi and a xing, after the states of China were unified by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC, surnames gradually spread to the lower classes and the difference between xing and shi blurred. Many shi surnames survive to the present day, according to Kiang Kang-Hu, there are 18 sources from which Chinese surnames may be derived, while others suggested at least 24. The following are some of the sources, Xing, These were usually reserved for the central lineage of the royal family. Of these xings, only Jiang and Yao have survived in their form to modern days as frequently occurring surnames. Royal decree by the Emperor, such as Kuang, state name, Many nobles and commoners took the name of their state, either to show their continuing allegiance or as a matter of national and ethnic identity. These are some of the most common Chinese surnames, name of a fief or place of origin, Fiefdoms were often granted to collateral branches of the aristocracy and it was natural as part of the process of sub-surnaming for their names to be used. An example is Di, Marquis of Ouyangting, whose descendants took the surname Ouyang, there are some two hundred examples of this identified, often of two-character surnames, but few have survived to the present. Names of an ancestor, Like the previous example, this was also a common origin with close to 500 or 600 examples,200 of which are two-character surnames, often an ancestors courtesy name would be used. For example, Yuan Taotu took the character of his grandfathers courtesy name Boyuan as his surname. Sometimes titles granted to ancestors could also be taken as surnames, seniority within the family, In ancient usage, the characters of meng, zhong, shu and ji were used to denote the first, second, third and fourth eldest sons in a family

9.
Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable

10.
Traditional characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world

11.
Simplified characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time

12.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks

13.
Mandarin Chinese
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Mandarin is a group of related varieties of Chinese spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of Standard Mandarin or Standard Chinese, because most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as the Northern dialects. Many local Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible, nevertheless, Mandarin is often placed first in any list of languages by number of native speakers. Most Mandarin varieties have four tones, the final stops of Middle Chinese have disappeared in most of these varieties, but some have merged them as a final glottal stop. Many Mandarin varieties, including the Beijing dialect, retain retroflex initial consonants, the capital has been within the Mandarin area for most of the last millennium, making these dialects very influential. Some form of Mandarin has served as a lingua franca since the 14th century. In the early 20th century, a form based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is the language of the Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan. Since their native varieties were often mutually unintelligible, these officials communicated using a Koiné language based on various northern varieties, when Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it Mandarin, from its Chinese name Guānhuà, or language of the officials. In everyday English, Mandarin refers to Standard Chinese, which is called simply Chinese. Standard Chinese is based on the particular Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing, with some lexical and it is the official spoken language of the Peoples Republic of China, the official language of the Republic of China, and one of the four official languages of the Republic of Singapore. It also functions as the language of instruction in Mainland China and it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, under the name Chinese. Chinese speakers refer to the standard language as Pǔtōnghuà in Mainland China, Guóyǔ in Taiwan, or Huáyǔ in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. Linguists use the term Mandarin to refer to the group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China. The alternative term Běifānghuà, or Northern dialects, is used less and less among Chinese linguists, by extension, the term Old Mandarin or Early Mandarin is used by linguists to refer to the northern dialects recorded in materials from the Yuan dynasty. Native speakers who are not academic linguists may not recognize that the variants they speak are classified in linguistics as members of Mandarin in a broader sense, the hundreds of modern local varieties of Chinese developed from regional variants of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese. Traditionally, seven groups of dialects have been recognized. Aside from Mandarin, the six are Wu, Gan and Xiang in central China

14.
Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China

15.
Southern Min
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Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin. Southern Min dialects are spoken in the part of Fujian. The variant spoken in Leizhou, Guangdong as well as Hainan is Hainanese and is not mutually intelligible with other Southern Min or Teochew, Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate. Puxian Min was originally based on the Quanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced by Eastern Min, eventually losing intellegility with Minnan. A forms of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, Southern Min is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Southern Min while some non-Hoklo speak Southern Min fluently, there are many Southern Min speakers also among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese immigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present-day Malaysia and Singapore. In general, Southern Min from southern Fujian is known as Hokkien, Hokkienese, many Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong and speak Teochew language, the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min-speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with the largest group being Hokkien, despite the similarities the two groups are rarely seen as part of the same Minnan Chinese subgroups. The variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou, the variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Those Southern Min variants that are known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are known as Teochew or Chaozhou. Teochew is of importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra. The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area, the Southern Min language variant spoken around Shanwei and Haifeng differs markedly from Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou

16.
Taiwanese Hokkien
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Taiwanese Hokkien, commonly known as Taiwanese, is a branched-off variant of Hokkien spoken natively by about 70% of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by the Taiwanese Hoklo people, who descended from immigrants from southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty, the Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanization is a popular orthography for this variant of Hokkien. However, due to the popularity of Hokkien entertainment media from Taiwan, Taiwanese has become a prominent variety of Hokkien. Taiwanese Hokkien is a variety of Hokkien, a group of Southern Min dialects. Like many Min varieties, it has literary and colloquial layers of vocabulary. The literary layer can be traced to the late Tang dynasty, in contrast, the colloquial layers of Min varieties are believed to have branched from the mainstream of Chinese around the time of the Han dynasty. Regional variations within Taiwanese may be traced back to Hokkien variants spoken in Southern Fujian, specifically those from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, Taiwanese Hokkien also contains loanwords from Japanese and the native Formosan languages. The literary form of Hokkien once flourished in Fujian and was brought to Taiwan by early emigrants, tale of the Lychee Mirror, a manuscript for a series of plays published during the Ming dynasty in 1566, is one of the earliest known works. This form of the language is now largely extinct, however, literary readings of the numbers are used in certain contexts such as reciting telephone numbers. During Yuan dynasty, Quanzhou became an international port for trade with the outside world. From that period onwards, due to political and economic reasons and this included the relatively undeveloped island of Formosa, starting around 1600. They brought with them their language, Hokkien. During the late Ming dynasty, due to chaos, there was increased migration from southern Fujian. The earliest immigrants who were involved in the development of Taiwan included pirate-merchants Chinese Peter, in 1621, Chinese Peter from Zhangzhou and his forces occupied Ponkan and started to develop Tirosen. After the death of Peter and another pirate, Li Dan of Quanzhou, by 1628, he had grown so powerful that the Ming court bestowed him the official title, Patrolling Admiral. In 1624, the number of Chinese in the island was about 25,000, during the reign of Chongzhen Emperor, there were frequent droughts in the Fujian region. Zheng and a Chinese official suggested to send victims to Taiwan, although this plan was never carried out, the Zheng family maintained an interest in Taiwan that would have dire consequences for the Dutch. In 1624 and 1626, the Dutch and Spanish forces occupied the Tainan and Keelung areas, during the 40 years of Dutch colonial rule of Taiwan, many Han Chinese from the Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Hakka regions of mainland China were recruited to help develop Taiwan

17.
Shanghainese
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The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, Hu language or Hu dialect, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the City of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, in English, Shanghainese sometimes refers to all Wu languages, variants and dialects, although they are only partially intelligible with one another. Shanghainese proper is a language of Taihu Wu, it contains vocabulary and expressions from the entire Taihu Wu area of southern Jiangsu. With nearly 14 million speakers, Shanghainese is also the largest single form of Wu Chinese and it serves as the lingua franca of the entire Yangtze River Delta region. Shanghainese is rich in vowels and in consonants, like other Taihu Wu dialects, Shanghainese has voiced initials. Neither Cantonese nor Mandarin has voiced initial stops or affricates, the Shanghainese tonal system is also significantly different from other Chinese varieties, sharing more similarities with the Japanese pitch accent. Shanghainese has two level tonal contrasts, while Cantonese and Mandarin are typical of contour tonal languages, Shanghai did not become a regional center of commerce until it was opened to foreign investment during the late Qing dynasty. Consequently, languages and dialects spoken around Shanghai had long been subordinate to those spoken around Jiaxing, in the late 19th century, most vocabulary of the Shanghai region had been a hybrid between Southern Jiangsu and Ningbonese. It underwent sustained growth that reached a hiatus in the 1930s during the Republican era, after 1949, the government imposed Mandarin as the official language of the whole nation of China. The dominance and influence of Shanghainese began to wane slightly, especially since Chinese economic reform began in 1978, Shanghai became home to a great number of migrants from all over the country. Due to the prominence of Mandarin, learning Shanghainese was no longer necessary for migrants. However, Shanghainese remained a vital part of the citys culture. In the 1990s, it was common for local radio. In 1995, the TV series Sinful Debt featured extensive Shanghainese dialogues, the Shanghainese TV series Lao Niang Jiu was broadcast from 1995 to 2007 and received tremendous popularity among Shanghainese residents. Shanghainese programming has since declined, over concerns of regionalist/localist accusations. From 1992 onward, Shanghainese use was discouraged in schools, in addition, Shanghais emergence as a cosmopolitan global city consolidated the status of Mandarin as the standard language of business and services, at the expense of the local language. Since 2005, new movements have emerged to protect Shanghainese from fading away, Shanghais former party boss Chen Liangyu, a native Shanghainese himself, reportedly supported her proposal. There have been talks of re-integrating Shanghainese into pre-kindergarten education, because children are unable to speak any Shanghainese

18.
Bagansiapiapi
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Bagansiapiapi or simply known as Bagan is a city in Riau province on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The city is the capital of Rokan Hilir Regency in the Riau Province and is located on the east coast of Sumatra, on the Rokan River delta across the strait west of Malacca and near Dumai. The town was populated mainly by Chinese immigrants who arrived at the end of 19th. Initially eighteen Chinese nationals sailed to Bagansiapiapi around 200 years ago, all were from the family named Hung. More followed, searching for a new life and seeking to avoid the economic hardships prevalent in Hokkien at that time, most of the Chinese population are Hokkien, originating from Tang-Ua, Kim-Mng, and Cin-Kang. Some Teochew, living mainly in the part, and a minority of Khek/Hakka also populated the town. Most of Chinese population communicate using the Tang-Ua dialect of Hokkien, Bagansiapiapi was one of the largest fish producers in the world during the late 1980s and early 1990s, ranking third in the world. Bagansiapiapi is also famous for swallow nest farming, indonesias birds nests are famous for their quality and are well liked by consumers. This industry has led Bagansiapiapi into a new era of growth, involving investment, high activity in building construction. In recent years, urbanization has been an issue, most of the youth leave the town after high school to pursue a better life, or higher education in larger cities. They normally return for the family reunion during the Chinese New Year celebrations. In the 1980s Bagansiapiapi was one of the largest fish producing towns in Indonesia, the fishing industry started with the first wave of Chinese immigrants, attracted to the area by the availability of abundant fishing. The towns heyday came under the jurisdiction of the Dutch East Indies, around 1930, the annual production has fallen since, being particularly affected by a collapse of fish numbers since the 1970s, by which time over 800 trawlers based in the town were fishing the Shunda Shelf. The trawling ban in Indonesian waters, introduced in 1980, has had a significant effect on the economy of the town, each year the ritual is able to bring tourists from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan to Mainland China to visiting Bagansiapiapi. This annual event is now promoted by the government as a source of Rokan Hilir tourism. Transportation has been an area of concern for the government, as there is no airport. Bagansiapiapi is reached by road, being some 6 hours from Pekanbaru, capital of Riau, from North Sumatra and Medan the travel time by road is about 11 hours. The local government has a policy of improving the town infrastructure, including the widening of roads

19.
Vietnamese language
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Vietnamese /ˌviɛtnəˈmiːz/ is an Austroasiatic language that originated in the north of modern-day Vietnam, where it is the national and official language. It is the language of the Vietnamese people, as well as a first or second language for the many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. As the result of Vietnamese emigration and cultural influence, Vietnamese speakers are found throughout the world, notably in East and Southeast Asia, North America, Australia, Vietnamese has also been officially recognized as a minority language in the Czech Republic. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family of which it has by far the most speakers, Vietnamese vocabulary has borrowings from Chinese, and it formerly used a modified set of Chinese characters called chữ nôm given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese alphabet in use today is a Latin alphabet with diacritics for tones. As the national language, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by ethnic Vietnamese, Vietnamese is also the native language of the Gin minority group in southern Guangxi Province in China. A significant number of speakers also reside in neighboring Cambodia. In the United States, Vietnamese is the sixth most spoken language, with over 1.5 million speakers and it is the third most spoken language in Texas, fourth in Arkansas and Louisiana, and fifth in California. Vietnamese is the seventh most spoken language in Australia, in France, it is the most spoken Asian language and the eighth most spoken immigrant language at home. Vietnamese is the official and national language of Vietnam. It is the first language of the majority of the Vietnamese population, in the Czech Republic, Vietnamese has been recognized as one of 14 minority languages, on the basis of communities that have either traditionally or on a long-term basis resided in the country. This status grants Czech citizens from the Vietnamese community the right to use Vietnamese with public authorities, Vietnamese is increasingly being taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam. Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools have been established for youth in many Vietnamese-speaking communities around the world, furthermore, there has also been a number of Germans studying Vietnamese due to increased economic investment in Vietnam. Vietnamese is taught in schools in the form of immersion to a varying degree in Cambodia, Laos. Classes teach students subjects in Vietnamese and another language, furthermore, in Thailand, Vietnamese is one of the most popular foreign languages in schools and colleges. Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago as part of the Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family. Later, Muong was found to be closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon–Khmer languages. The term Vietic was proposed by Hayes, who proposed to redefine Viet–Muong as referring to a subbranch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Muong

20.
Emperor Yao
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Emperor Yao was a legendary Chinese ruler, according to various sources, one of the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors. Yaos ancestral name is Yi Qi or Qi, clan name is Taotang, given name is Fangxun, as the son to Emperor Ku. He is also known as Tang Yao, Yaos mother has been worshipped as the goddess Yao-mu. Often extolled as the perfect and intelligent sage-king, Yaos benevolence and diligence served as a model to future Chinese monarchs. In the Classic of History, one of the Five Classics, according to the legend, Yao became the ruler at 20 and died at 119 when he passed his throne to Shun the Great, to whom he had given his two daughters in marriage. According to the Bamboo Annals, Yao abdicated his throne to Shun in his 73rd year of reign, of his many contributions, Yao is said to have invented the game of Weiqi, reportedly to favorably influence his vicious playboy son Danzhu. After the customary mourning period after Yaos death, Shun named Danzhu as the ruler. The Bamboo Annals represent Yao as having banished prince Danzhu to Danshui in his 58th year of reign. They add that following Yaos abdication in favor of Shun, Danzhu kept away from Shun, and that following the death of Yao, Shun tried to yield the throne to him, however, an alternative account found elsewhere in the Annals offers a different story. It holds that Shun dethroned and imprisoned Yao, then raised Danzhu to the throne for a time before seizing it himself. Yao was claimed to be the ancestor of the Han Dynasty Emperor Liu Bang, other important noble families have also claimed descent through Yellow Emperor. This was done in order to make a solar and lunar calendar with 366 days for a year, Some recent archaeological work at Taosi, an ancient site in Shanxi, dating to 2300 BC–1900 BC, may have provided some evidence for this. A sort of an ancient observatory – the oldest in East Asia – was found at Taosi that seems to coincide with the ancient records, Some Chinese archaeologists believe that Taosi was the site of a state Youtang conquered by Emperor Yao and made to be his capital. The structure consists of an outer semi-ring-shaped path, and a semi-round rammed-earth platform with a diameter of about 60 m, Great Flood Imperial examination in Chinese mythology C. K. Religion in Chinese Society, A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion, berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press

21.
King Wen of Zhou
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King Wen of Zhou was king of Zhou during the late Shang dynasty in ancient China. Although it was his son Wu who conquered the Shang following the Battle of Muye, a large number of the hymns of the Classic of Poetry are praises to the legacy of King Wen. Some consider him the first epic hero of Chinese history, born Ji Chang, Wen was the son of Tai Ren and Ji Jili, the king of a small state along the Wei River in present-day Shaanxi. His father was betrayed and executed by the Shang king Wen Ding in the late 12th century BC and he married Tai Si and had at least ten sons. At one point, King Zhou of Shang, fearing Wens growing power and his second son, King Wu, followed his fathers wishes and crushed the Shang at Muye, creating the imperial Zhou dynasty. A burial mound in Zhouling town, Xianyang, Shaanxi was once thought to be the resting place of King Wen. In the Qing dynasty the tomb was fitted with a headstone bearing Wens name and incorporated into a complex in his honor. Nearby tombs were thought to be those of Wens successors King Wu, modern archeology has since concluded that the five tombs are not old enough to be from the Zhou dynasty, and are more likely to be those of Han dynasty royals. The true location of King Wens tomb is unknown, although it is likely to be in the Xianyang-Xian area. Many of the older odes from the Classic of Poetry are hymns in praise of King Wen, King Wen is also credited with having stacked the eight trigrams in their various permutations to create the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. He is also said to have written the judgments which are appended to each hexagram, the most commonly used sequence of the 64 hexagrams is attributed to him and is usually referred to as the King Wen sequence. In 196 BC, Han Gaozu gave King Wen the title Greatest of All Kings, Ci Hai Bian Ji Wei Yuan Hui. Shanghai Ci Shu Chu Ban She,1979 Wu, K. C

22.
Emperor Gaozu of Han
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Emperor Gaozu of Han, born Liu Bang, was the founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigning from 202 –195 BC. He was one of the few dynasty founders in Chinese history with humble origin from the peasant class, before coming to power, Liu Bang initially served as a minor patrol officer for the Qin dynasty in his hometown Pei County, within the conquered state of Chu. With the First Emperors death and the Qin Empires subsequent political chaos, Liu Bang renounced his government position and he won the race against fellow rebel leader Xiang Yu to invade the Qin heartland and forced the surrender of the last Qin emperor in 206 BC. Within the year, Liu Bang broke out with his army and conquered the Three Qins, in 202 BC, Liu Bang emerged victorious following the Battle of Gaixia, unified most of China under his control, and established the Han dynasty with himself as the founding emperor. During his reign, Liu Bang reduced taxes and corvée, promoted Confucianism and he also initiated the policy of heqin to maintain a de jure peace between the Han Empire and the Xiongnu after losing the Battle of Baideng in 200 BC. He died in 195 BC and was succeeded by his son, in imperial Han myth, Liu Bang was a descendant of the mythical Emperor Yao, who descended from the Yellow Emperor. It is a practice among many ancient Chinese noble families to claim descent from the mythical Yellow Emperor. Liu Bang was born to a peasant family in Fenyu Village, Zhongyang Township and his parents names were not recorded in history, they were simply referred to as Liu Taigong and Liu Ao. According to legend, before Liu Bangs birth, his mother was caught in a rainstorm, at that moment, lightning struck and the sky darkened. Liu Bangs father went to fetch his wife home and saw a dragon hovering above her and she became pregnant and later gave birth to Liu Bang. The young Liu Bang was outspoken, charismatic and of great generosity, Liu Bang persisted in his idling ways and depended on his brothers family for food and lodging. When he grew older, he became a friend and live-in companion of a former retainer of Lord Xinling named Zhang Er. After Qin dynasty conquered Chu, Zhang Er went into hiding and he nevertheless forged close relationships with most of the local county bureaucrats, and earned himself a small reputation in the district. Liu Bang was once sent for statute labour in the capital Xianyang, awed by the majestic sight of the royal convoy, he exclaimed, Wow, this is how a great man should be. One day, Lü Wen, a wealthy and influential gentry from Shanfu County who had moved to Pei County, was putting on a feast to host the local elites. Xiao He, who was in charge of helping Lü Wen collect gifts from the visitors, Liu Bang went there without bringing any money and said, I offer 10,000 coins. Lü Wen chatted with Liu Bang, and said, I used to predict fortunes for many people and he then offered his daughter Lü Zhis hand in marriage to Liu Bang. After they were wed, Lü Zhi bore Liu Bang a son Liu Ying, Liu Bang was tasked with escorting a group of convicts to Mount Li to build the First Emperors mausoleum

23.
Chu (state)
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Chu was a hegemonic, Zhou dynasty era state. From King Wu of Chu in the early 8th century BCE, with its continued expansion Chu became a great Warring States period power. Also known as Jing, Jingchu and Shu, Chu included most of the provinces of Hubei and Hunan, along with parts of Chongqing, Guizhou, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang. For more than 400 years, the Chu capital Danyang was located at the junction of the Dan and Xi Rivers near present-day Xichuan County, Henan, but later moved to Ying. The ruling house of Chu originally bore the clan name Nai and lineage name Yan, according to legends recounted in Sima Qians Records of the Grand Historian, the royal family of Chu descended from the Yellow Emperor and his grandson and successor Zhuanxu. Zhuanxus great-grandson Wuhui was put in charge of fire by Emperor Ku, wuhuis son Luzhong had six sons, all born by Caesarian section. The youngest, Jilian, adopted the ancestral surname Mi, jilian’s descendant Yuxiong was the teacher of King Wen of Zhou. After the Zhou overthrew the Shang dynasty, King Cheng awarded Yuxiongs great-grandson Xiong Yi with the fiefdom of Chu, Xiong Yi built the first capital of Chu at Danyang. In 977 BCE, during his campaign against Chu, King Zhao of Zhous boat sank, after this death, Zhou ceased to expand to the south, allowing the southern tribes and Chu to cement their own autonomy much earlier than the states to the north. The Chu viscount Xiong Qu overthrew E in 863 BCE but subsequently made its capital Ezhou one of his capitals, in either 703 or 706, the ruler Xiong Tong proclaimed himself king, establishing Chus full independence from the Zhou dynasty. In its early years, Chu was a successful expansionist and militaristic state that developed a reputation for coercing and absorbing its allies, Chu grew from a small state into a large kingdom. King Zhuang was even considered one of the five Hegemons of the era, after a number of battles with neighboring states, sometime between 695 and 689 BCE, the Chu capital moved southeast from Danyang to Ying. Chu first consolidated its power by absorbing lesser states in its original area, the threat from Chu resulted in multiple northern alliances under the leadership of Jin. These alliances kept Chu in check, with the first major victory won at the Chengpu in 632 BCE, at the beginning of the sixth century BCE, Jin strengthened the state of Wu near the Yangtze delta to act as a counterweight against Chu. Wu defeated Qi and then invaded Chu in 506 BCE, following the Battle of Boju, it occupied Chus capital at Ying, forcing King Zhao to flee to his allies in Yun and Sui. King Zhao eventually returned to Ying but, after another attack from Wu in 504 BCE, Chu began to strengthen Yue in modern Zhejiang to serve as allies against Wu. Yue was initially subjugated by King Fuchai of Wu until he released their king Goujian, freed from its difficulties with Wu, Chu annexed Chen in 479 BCE and overran Cai to the north in 447 BCE. This policy of expansion continued until the last generation before the fall to Qin, however, by the end of the 5th century BCE, the Chu government had become very corrupt and inefficient, with much of the states treasury used primarily to pay for the royal entourage

24.
Northern Wei
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During the Taihe period of Emperor Xiaowen, court advisers instituted sweeping reforms and introduced changes that eventually led to the dynasty moving its capital from Datong to Luoyang, in 494. The Tuoba renamed themselves the Yuan as a part of systematic Sinicization, towards the end of the dynasty there was significant internal dissension resulting in a split into Eastern Wei and Western Wei. Many antiques and art works, both Daoist and Buddhist, from this period have survived, the Jin Dynasty had developed an alliance with the Tuoba against the Xiongnu state Han Zhao. In 315 the Tuoba chief was granted the title of the Prince of Dai, after Former Qins emperor Fu Jiān was defeated by Jin forces at the Battle of Fei River in his failed bid to unify China, the Former Qin state began to break apart. By 386, Tuoba Gui, the son of Tuoba Shiyijian, Later he changed his title to the Prince of Wei, and his state was therefore known as Northern Wei. In 391, Tuoba Gui defeated the Rouran tribes and killed their chief, Heduohan, initially Northern Wei was a vassal of Later Yan, but by 395 had rebelled and by 398 had conquered most of Later Yan territory north of the Yellow River. In 399 Tuoba Gui he declared himself Emperor Daowu, and that title was used by Northern Weis rulers for the rest of the states history, as the empires history progressed, this appeared to be a major contributing factor leading to corruption among officials. Not until the 2nd century of the empires existence did the state begin to distribute salaries to its officials, only an imperial consort who was successful in forging a golden statue could become the empress. All men, regardless of ethnicity, were ordered to tie their hair into a braid that would then be rolled and placed on top of the head. When a crown prince is named, his mother, if still alive, as a result, because emperors would not have mothers, they often honored their wet nurses with the honorific title, Nurse Empress Dowager. As sinicization of the Northern Wei state progressed, these customs, Five families formed a neighborhood Five lin formed a village Five li formed a commune At each of these levels, leaders that were associated with the central government were appointed. In order for the state to reclaim dry, barren areas of land, the Sui and Tang Dynasties later resurrected this system in the 7th century. During the reign of Emperor Daowu, the number of deported people from the regions east of Taihangshan to Datong was estimated to be around 460,000. Deportations typically took place once a new piece of territory had been conquered, as the Northern Wei state grew, the emperors desire for Han Chinese institutions and advisors grew. Cui Hao, an advisor at the courts in Datong played a part in this process. He introduced Han Chinese administrative methods and penal codes in the Northern Wei state, Chinese influence accelerated during the capitals move to Luoyang in 494 and Emperor Xiaowen continued this by establishing a policy of systematic sinicization that was continued by his successors. The royal family took the sinicization a step further by changing their name to Yuan. Marriages to Chinese families were encouraged, with this, Buddhist temples started appearing everywhere, displacing Taoism as the state religion

25.
Zheng (state)
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It was the most powerful of the vassal states at the beginning of the Eastern Zhou, and was the first state to clearly establish a code of law in its late period of 543 BCE. Its ruling house had the surname Ji, making them a branch of the Zhou royal house, prince You, known posthumously as Duke Huan of Zheng, established what would be the last bastion of Western Zhou. He went on to serve as Situ under King You of Zhou, when the Quanrong tribes sacked the Zhou capital Haojing in 771 BC, Duke Huan was killed along with his nephew King You of Zhou. Duke Huan was succeeded by his son Duke Wu, along with Marquis Wen of Jin, Duke Wu supported King Ping of Zhou against a rival, thereby helping to establish the Eastern Zhou. He re-established the state of Zheng in modern-day Xinzheng, Henan, the Zheng rulers served as high ministers of the Zhou kings for several generations. The state of Zheng was one of the strongest at the beginning of the Spring, Zheng was the first Zhou state to annex another state, Xi, sometime between 684 and 680 BC. Throughout the Spring and Autumn period, Zheng was one of the wealthiest states, relying on its location for inter-state commerce. Zheng often used its wealth to bribe itself out of difficult situations, when Duke Zhuang died there was a civil war between his sons and Zheng ceased to be a powerful state. By the later stages of the period, Zheng had no room to expand, due to its central location, Zheng was hemmed in on all sides by larger states. During the later stages of the Spring and Autumn period, Zheng frequently switched its diplomatic alliances, Zheng was the center of diplomatic contention between Chu and Qi, then later Chu and Jin. Although Zheng was forced to become a player in the later stages of the Spring and Autumn period, it was still quite strong, defeating a combined alliance of Jin, Song, Chen. Under the statesman Zichan, Zheng was the first state to establish a code of law in 543 BCE. Zheng later declined until it was annexed by the state of Han in 375 BCE, the Zheng family of Xingyang 荥阳郑氏 claim descent from the Zhou dynasty kings through the rulers of the State of Zheng. The Marquis of Xingyang rank was created for Zheng Xi, the Xingyang Zheng descendants included Zheng Daozhao and Zheng Xi. Zheng Wanjun was a member of the Xingyang Zheng, other Xingyang Zheng descendants were Zheng Yuzhong and Zheng Jiong. The Zheng of Xingyang may have been miswritten in the records as the Zheng of Xingyang 荥阳郑氏, Zichan, celebrated philosopher and statesman Zheng Mao, exemplary woman of the Lienü zhuan Shen Buhai 申不害, future Prime Minister of Han and Legalist philosopher. Another Royal Tomb of King Zheng Discovered in Henan

26.
Zhou dynasty
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The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that emerged during the late Warring States period. He even received sacrifice as a harvest god, the term Hòujì was probably an hereditary title attached to a lineage. Jus son Liu, however, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin, tai later led the clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley of modern-day Qishan County. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly fled to the Yangtze delta. Jilis son Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng, the Zhou enfeoffed a member of the defeated Shang royal family as the Duke of Song, which was held by descendants of the Shang royal family until its end. This practice was referred to as Two Kings, Three Reverences, according to Nicholas Bodman, the Zhou appear to have spoken a language not basically different in vocabulary and syntax from that of the Shang. A recent study by David McCraw, using lexical statistics, reached the same conclusion, the Zhou emulated extensively Shang cultural practices, perhaps to legitimize their own rule, and became the successors to Shang culture. At the same time, the Zhou may also have connected to the Xirong, a broadly defined cultural group to the west of the Shang. According to the historian Li Feng, the term Rong during the Western Zhou period was used to designate political and military adversaries rather than cultural. The proto-Zhou were first located in the Shaanxi-Shanxi highland, where they absorbed elements from the Guangshe culture, King Liu moved his people to the lower Fen Valley and to the western bank of the Yellow River, where they resumed agriculture. His son Qing Jie, led the Zhou to the valley of the Jing River. They stayed there until Dan Fu moved again to the Wei Valley in order to avoid incursion by the Rongdi nomads. During this period, the Zhou mingled with the Qiang people, in all these stages, the advanced Shang bronze culture constantly imparted its influence on the Zhou. The Qi area was the region in all these influences would come to fruition. The contact among the proto-Zhou, the native Shaanxi Longshan, the Qiang, King Wu maintained the old capital for ceremonial purposes but constructed a new one for his palace and administration nearby at Hao. Although Wus early death left a young and inexperienced heir, the Duke of Zhou assisted his nephew King Cheng in consolidating royal power. Wary of the Duke of Zhous increasing power, the Three Guards, Zhou princes stationed on the eastern plain, to maintain Zhou authority over its greatly expanded territory and prevent other revolts, he set up the fengjian system

27.
Liu Song dynasty
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The Liu Song dynasty, also known as Former Song, was first of the four Southern Dynasties in China, succeeding the Eastern Jin and followed by the Southern Qi. The dynasty was founded by Liu Yu, whose surname together with Song forms the most commonly used name for the dynasty and this appellation is used to distinguish it from a later dynasty of the same name, the Song dynasty, which is better known and more significant. The Liu Song is also at times referred to as the Southern Song, as it is one of the Southern Dynasties period, however, the later Song dynasty, after 1127, when it moved its capital south to Linan, is most commonly referred to as Southern Song. Thus, for the dynasty which is the subject of this article. The Liu Song was a time there was much internal turmoil. A number of emperors were incompetent and/or tyrannical, which at least partially led to many military revolts and these rulers include Liu Shao, Emperor Xiaowu, Emperor Qianfei, Emperor Ming, and Emperor Houfei. Emperor Ming was especially vicious, murdering a number of his brothers, nephews. Such internal instability eventually led to the dynastys destruction and this is known as the Reign of Yuanjia and one of the relative golden ages for the Southern Dynasties. Originally a peasant of modest origins, Liu Yu joined the army at an age and soon distinguished himself in the army and was quickly promoted to the command of an army. Liu Yu was instrumental in fighting the rebel Huan Xuan, after Huan Xuans fall, Liu Yu gained control of the Jin dynasty. The Han dynasty founder Emperor Gaozu of Hans younger brother Liu Jiao was the ancestors of Liu Yu. Regarded as one of the best generals of the Northern and Southern dynasties and he started off his career by conquering Southern Yan, which bordered Jin to the north and had adopted a policy of aggression and kidnapping citizens from the Jin. By spring of 410, he had captured the southern Yan capital at Guanggu, afterwards, he campaigned against western Shu in modern Sichuan. Using a brilliant military manoeuver mentioned in the Art of War, surprising the Shu forces, he quickly captured Chengdu and re-annexed that area back into Jin. It is recorded that he engaged the Wei army by the use of spears launched by crossbows, panicking the Wei cavalry, after this success, it seemed that Jin would exterminate the remaining barbarian states in the north and reunify China. However, fortunes began to change for the Jin forces, Liu Mengzhi died and in order to secure his power, Liu Yu left for Jiankang, abandoning the management of the North to his general Wang Zhene. After his departure, the state of Xia attacked Guanzhong and reoccupied it, however, Jin retained its former eastern capital, Luoyang, as well as most of the Chinese heartland. Following his return to Jiankang, Liu Yu ended the rule of the Jin and became himself in 420

28.
Miao people
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The Miao is an ethnic group recognized by the government of China as one of the 55 official minority groups. Miao is a Chinese term and does not reflect the self-designations of the component groups of people, which include Hmong, Hmub, Xong, and A-Hmao. Because of the given reasons, many Miao peoples cannot communicate with each other in their mother tongues. The Miao live primarily in southern Chinas mountains, in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong, some members of the Miao sub-groups, most notably the Hmong people, have migrated out of China into Southeast Asia. Following the communist takeover of Laos in 1975, a group of Hmong refugees resettled in several Western nations, mainly in the United States, France. There has been a recent tendency by Hmong Americans to group all Miao peoples together under the term Hmong because of their disdain for the Chinese term Miao, the term Miao gained official status in 1949 as a minzu encompassing a group of linguistically-related ethnic minorities in Southwest China. Historically, the term Miao had been applied inconsistently to a variety of non-Han peoples, early Western writers used Chinese-based names in various transcriptions, Miao, Miao-tse, Miao-tsze, Meau, Meo, mo, miao-tseu etc. In Southeast Asian contexts words derived from the Chinese Miao took on a sense which was perceived as derogatory by the Hmong subgroup living in that region, in China, however, the term has no such context and is used by the Miao people themselves, of every group. The later prominence of Hmong people in the West has led to a situation where the entire Miao linguistic/cultural family is referred to as Hmong in English language sources. Following the recent increased interaction of Hmong in the West with Miao in China it is reported that some upwardly aspiring non-Hmong Miao have even begun to identify themselves as Hmong. However, most non-Hmong Miao in China are unfamiliar with the term as referring to their group and continue to use Miao. Though the Miao themselves use various self-designations, the Chinese traditionally classify them according to the most characteristic colour of the womens clothes.6 million. Outside of China, members of the Miao linguistic/cultural family sub-group or nations of the Hmong live in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Burma due to outward migrations starting in the 18th century. As a result of recent migrations in the aftermath of the Indochina and Vietnam Wars from 1949–75, many Hmong people now live in the United States, French Guiana, France, altogether, there are approximately 8 million speakers in the Miao language family. This language family, which consists of 6 languages and around 35 dialects belongs to the Hmong/Miao branch of the Hmong–Mien language family, there are about 1. 5–2 million Hmong in China. Note, The Miao areas of Sichuan province became part of the newly created Chongqing Municipality in 1997, most Miao currently live in China. Miao population growth in China,1953,2,510,0001964,2,780,0001982,5,030,0001990,7,390,0003,600,000 Miao, about half of the entire Chinese Miao population, were in Guizhou in 1990. There are 2,000,000 Hmong spread throughout northern Vietnam, Laos, Burma,174,000 live in Thailand, where they are one of the six main hill tribes

29.
Lu (state)
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Lu was a vassal state during the Zhou dynasty of ancient China. Founded in the 11th century BC, its rulers were from a branch of the House of Ji that ruled the Zhou dynasty. The first duke was Boqin, a son of the Duke of Zhou, Lu was the home state of Confucius as well as Mozi, and as such has an outsized cultural influence among the states of the Eastern Zhou and in history. The Annals of Spring and Autumn, for instance, was written with the Lu rulers years as their basis, another great work of Chinese history, Zuo Zhuan was also written in Lu. The states capital was in Qufu and its territory covered the central. It was bordered to the north by the state of Qi. The position of Lu on the frontiers of the Western Zhou state, facing the non-Zhou peoples in states such as Lai. Lu was one of states founded in eastern China at the very beginning of the Zhou dynasty, in order to extend Zhou rule far from its capital at Zongzhou. Throughout Western Zhou times, it played an important role in stabilising Zhou control in modern-day Shandong, during the early Spring and Autumn period, Lu was one of the strongest states and a rival of Qi to its north. Under Duke Yin and Duke Huan of Lu, Lu defeated both Qi and Song on several occasions, at the same time, it undertook expeditions against other minor states. This changed by the middle of the period, as Lus main rival, Qi, although a Qi invasion was defeated in the Battle of Changshao in 684 BC, Lu would never regain the upper hand against its neighbour. Meanwhile, the power of the dukes of Lu was eventually undermined by the feudal clans of Jisun 季孫, Mengsun 孟孫. The domination of the Three Huan was such that Duke Zhao of Lu, in attempting to regain power, was exiled by them and it would not be until Duke Mu of Lus reign, in the early Warring States period, that power eventually returned to the dukes again. In 249 BC King Kaolie of the state of Chu invaded and annexed Lu, Duke Qing, the last ruler of Lu, became a commoner. The main line of the Duke of Zhous descendants came from his firstborn son, the Duke of Zhous offspring held the title of Wujing Boshi. 東野家族大宗世系 Family Tree of the descendants of the Duke of Zhou in Chinese Duke Huan of Lus son through Qingfu was the ancestor of Mencius, the genealogy is found in the Mencius family tree. List of Lu rulers based on the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian

30.
Zhurong
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Zhurong, also known as Chongli, is an important personage in Chinese mythology and Chinese folk religion. According to the Huainanzi and the texts of Mozi and his followers, Zhurong is a god of fire. The Shanhaijing gives alternative genealogies for Zhurong, including descent from both the Yan Emperor and Yellow Emperor, some sources associate Zhurong with some of the principle early and ancient myths of China, such as those of Nuwa, Gong Gong and the Great Flood. Chinese mythology has in the past been believed to be, at least in part and this is also true in the case of Zhurong. In Sima Qians Records of the Grand Historian, Zhurong is portrayed as a historical person, Zhurong was said to be the son of Gaoyang, a sky god. Gaoyang also had a son, Gun, who fathered Yu the Great, the imperial clan of the Qin Dynasty also claimed descent through Gaoyang. Zhurong was also claimed to be an ancestor to the eight lineages of the families of the Chu state. David Hawkes makes a case for the use of the lì radical in Zhurongs name as being significant in terms of culture and ceramic technology in relationship to the Chuci material. The Shanhaijing represents Zhurong as the son of a father whose name translates as Play-with-Pots, Chinese ritual bronzes Xirang Hawkes, David, translator and introduction. The Songs of the South, An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan, ISBN 978-0-14-044375-2 Yang, Lihui, et al. ISBN 978-0-19-533263-6 Unihan Database - U+9B32

31.
Emperor Hui of Han
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Emperor Hui of Han was the second emperor of the Han Dynasty in China. He was the son of the first Han emperor, Han Gaozu. He is generally remembered as a weak character dominated by his mother, Empress Dowager Lü, personally kind and generous and he tried to protect Ruyi, Prince Yin of Zhao, his younger half-brother, from being murdered by Empress Dowager Lü, but failed. After that he indulged himself in drinking and sex and died at a young age. Empress Dowager Lü installed two of his sons, Liu Gong and Liu Hong, the sons of the Emperors concubine after he died without a designated heir. Emperor Huis wife was Empress Zhang Yan, a niece of his by his sister Princess Yuan of Lu, Liu Yings childhood is not completely clear. What is known is that he was not his father Liu Bangs oldest son—that would be Liu Fei, who would later be made the Prince of Qi. However, Liu Ying was considered to be the heir because his mother. In 205 BC, Liu Bang appeared to be near total victory, the then-very young Liu Ying must have then spent these days not knowing what the eventual fate of his grandfather and mother would be. After Liu Bangs victory and self-declaration as the emperor, thus establishing the Han Dynasty, in 202 BC, he made his wife empress and Liu Ying, as his proper heir, crown prince. Under the title of Ying Taizi, he was considered to be kind and tolerant, rather, he favored his young son Liu Ruyi, whom he considered to be more like him and whose mother, Consort Qi, was his favorite concubine. With the support of the officials, however, Prince Yings status as heir survived despite Consort Qis machinations. As crown prince, Prince Ying, along with his mother, Prince Ying was instead put in charge of home territories around the capital Changan, assisted by Confucian scholar Shusun Tong and strategist Zhang Liang. He appeared to carry out the tasks competently but without distinction, Prince Ying succeeded to the throne of Han when his father died in 195 BC from complications of an arrow wound suffered during the campaign against Ying Bu. Immediately upon Prince Yings ascension to the throne as Emperor Hui, Empress Lü, now empress dowager and she wanted to carry out a plot of revenge against Consort Qi and her son Ruyi. She first arrested Consort Qi and put her in prison garb, instead of directly moving against Zhou and Liu Ruyi, though, Lü circumvented Zhou by first summoning him to the capital, and then summoning Liu Ruyi. Emperor Hui tried to save Liu Ruyis life, before Liu Ruyi could get to the capital, Emperor Hui intercepted his young brother at Bashang and received Liu Ruyi into his palace, and they dined together and slept together. Empress Dowager Lü wanted to kill Liu Ruyi, but was afraid that any attempt might also harm her own son, Empress Dowager Lü got her chance in winter 195 BC

32.
Emperor Wen of Han
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Emperor Wen of Han was the fifth emperor of the Han Dynasty of ancient China. His personal name was Liu Heng, Liu Heng was a son of Emperor Gao of Han and Consort Bo, later empress dowager. When Emperor Gao suppressed the rebellion of Dai, he made Liu Heng Prince of Dai and his reign brought a much needed political stability that laid the groundwork for prosperity under his grandson Emperor Wu. Historians noted that the tax rates were at a ratio of 1 out of 30 and 1 out of 60, corresponding to 3. 33% and 1. 67%, warehouses were so full of grain that some of it was left to decay. In a move of lasting importance in 165 BC, Emperor Wen introduced recruitment to the service through examinations. Previously, potential officials never sat for any sort of academic examinations and their names were sent by local officials to the central government based on reputations and abilities, which were sometimes judged subjectively. He was said by Liu Xiang to have been fond of reading Shen Buhai, using his method, Xing-Ming to control his subordinates and devoting much time to legal cases. These era names are not true era names, but are retrospective, in the sense that the era-name system, Emperor Wen, in accordance with prior imperial calendrical systems, would have simply referred to the number of years in his reign. But he reset the calendar once at the persuasion of the sorcerer Xinyuan Ping, thus historians need to refer to the eras before and after the resetting separately. Qianyuan 179 BC-164 BC Houyuan 163 BC-157 BC In 196 BC, after Emperor Gao defeated the Chen Xi rebellion in the Dai region, he made Liu Heng, his son by Consort Bo, the capital of the principality was at Jinyang. Dai was a region on the boundaries with Xiongnu, and Emperor Gao probably created the principality with the mind to use it as a base to defend against Xiongnu raids. For the first year of the existence, Chen, whose army was defeated but who eluded capture, remained a threat. The grand empress dowager then made Lü Lu Prince of Zhao, after some hesitation, Prince Heng, then 23 years old, accepted the throne as Emperor Wen. His nephew, Emperor Houshao, viewed as a puppet of Grand Empress Dowager Lü. Emperor Wen quickly showed an aptitude to govern the empire with diligence, heavily influenced by his wife Empress Dou, who was an adherent of Taoism, Emperor Wen governed the country with the general policies of non-interference with the people and relaxed laws. His personal life was marked by thriftiness and general willingness to forgive and he was initially very deferential to Zhou Bo, Chen Ping, and Guan Ying, who were instrumental in his accession, and they served as successive prime ministers. In 179 BC, he created a governmental program for those in need. Loans or tax exemptions were offered to widowers, widows, orphans, and seniors without children

33.
Emperor Jing of Han
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Emperor Jing of Han, personal name Liu Qi, was the sixth emperor of the Chinese Han dynasty from 157 to 141 BC. His reign saw the limiting of the power of the feudal kings/princes which resulted in the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154 BC, Emperor Jing managed to crush the revolt and princes were thereafter denied rights to appoint ministers for their fiefs. This move consolidated central power which paved the way for the reign of his son Emperor Wu of Han. Emperor Jing had a complicated personality and he continued his father Emperor Wens policy of general non-interference with the people, reduced tax and other burdens, and promoted government thrift. He continued and magnified his fathers policy of reduction in criminal sentences and his light governance of the people was due to the Taoist influences of his mother, Empress Dou. Emperor Jing was born to Emperor Wen, then Prince of Dai and he was his fathers oldest son. After his father became emperor in 180 BC, then-Prince Qi was made crown prince in 179 BC, at the same time, his mother was made empress. In his childhood as crown prince, Prince Qi was praised for being compassionate and he was deeply influenced by his mother Empress Dou, who was a Taoist and required all of her children and grandchildren to study Taoist doctrines. He also developed deep bonds with his older sister Princess Liu Piao and his younger brother Liu Wu, in 157 BC, Emperor Wen died, and Prince Qi became emperor. In accordance with Emperor Wens will, the period of mourning was shortened, Emperor Jings grandmother Empress Dowager Bo became grand empress dowager, and Empress Dou became empress dowager. Prince Qis wife, Crown Princess Bo became empress and these era names are not true era names in the sense that the era name system, as instituted by Emperor Jings son Emperor Wu, had not come into place. Under Jing, taxes were cut in half, to one-thirtieth of the crop and he also continued his fathers policy of heqin with Xiongnu, which largely avoided large conflicts with that northern neighbor. However, one immediate issue confronting Emperor Jing was the power possessed by princes of collateral lines of the imperial clan, the princes often built up their own military strengths and resisted edicts issued by the emperor. This was already an issue in Emperor Wens days, but Emperor Wen did not take any actions on the issue. Emperor Jing did not designate a crown prince for the first few years of his reign, because Empress Bo did not have any sons. His mother, the Dowager Empress Dou, wanted him to make his younger brother Liu Wu, the Prince of Liang, the crown prince, however, Liu Wu was given many privileges not given to other princes. The issue of dealing with powerful princes would soon erupt into a war known as the Rebellion of the Seven States. While Emperor Jing was crown prince, Liu Pis heir apparent Liu Xian had been on a visit to the capital Changan

34.
Emperor Wu of Han
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Emperor Wu of Han, born Liu Che, courtesy name Tong, was the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty of China, ruling from 141–87 BC. His reign lasted 54 years — a record not broken until the reign of the Kangxi Emperor more than 1,800 years later. His reign resulted in vast territorial expansion, development of a strong and centralized state resulting from his governmental re-organization and it was also during his reign that cultural contact with western Eurasia was greatly increased, directly or indirectly. Many new crops and other items were introduced to China during his reign, Emperor Wu successfully repelled the nomadic Xiongnu from systematically raiding northern China, and dispatched his envoy Zhang Qian in 139 BC to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi of Kangju. This resulted in further missions to Central Asia, michael Loewe called the reign of Emperor Wu the high point of Modernist policies, looking back to adapt ideas from the pre-Han period. His policies and most trusted advisers were Legalist, favoring adherents of Shang Yang and these reforms had an enduring effect throughout the existence of imperial China and an enormous influence on neighboring civilizations. Emperor Wu was also known for his employment of shaman advisers, the personal name of Emperor Wu was Liu Che. The use of Han in referring to emperor Wu is a reference to the Han dynasty of which he was a part. His family name is Liu, the family or clan of the Han dynasty shared the family name of Liu, the family name of Liu Bang. The character Di is a title, this is the Chinese word which in imperial history of China means emperor, the character Wu literally means martial or warlike, but is also related to the concept of a particular divinity in the historical Chinese religious pantheon existing at that time. Combined, Wu plus di makes the name Wudi, the posthumous name used for historical and for religious purposes. One of Han Wudis innovations was the practice of changing names every so many years. Thus, the practice for dating years during the reign of Wudi came to be the nth year of the, when they got close to Han borders, She assassinated the general and claimed to Emperor Wu that he had defeated Joseon in battle. Emperor Wu, unaware of his deception, made him the commander of the Commandery of Liaodong. King Ugeo, offended, made a raid on Liaodong and killed She, in response, Emperor Wu commissioned a two-pronged attack against Joseon. Initially, Joseon offered to become a vassal, but peace negotiations broke down by the Chinese forces refusal to let a Joseon force escort its crown prince to Changan to pay tribute to Emperor Wu, Han took over the Joseon lands in 108 BC and established four commanderies. Also in 109 BC, Emperor Wu sent a force against the Kingdom of Dian. When the King of Dian surrendered, it was incorporated into Han territory with the King of Dian being permitted to keep his traditional authority, Emperor Wu established five commanderies over Dian and the other nearby kingdoms

Regular script
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Regular script, also called 正楷, 真書, 楷體 and 正書, is the newest of the Chinese script styles, hence most common in modern writings and publications. Regular script came into being between the Eastern Hàn and Cáo Wèi dynasties, and its first known master was Zhōng Yáo and he is known as the “father of regular script”, and his famous works include the X

Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated sinc

4.
Two men and a woman having a conversation in American Sign Language

Old Chinese
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Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou p

1.
Zhou dynasty bronze inscription

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Seal script on bamboo strips from the Warring States period

Han dynasty
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The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known po

1.
History of China

2.
Han dynasty in 1 AD.

3.
A silk banner from Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan province. It was draped over the coffin of Lady Dai (d. 168 BC), wife of the Marquess Li Cang (利蒼) (d. 186 BC), chancellor for the Kingdom of Changsha.

4.
A gilded bronze oil lamp in the shape of a kneeling female servant, dated 2nd century BC, found in the tomb of Dou Wan, wife of the Han prince Liu Sheng; its sliding shutter allows for adjustments in the direction and brightness in light while it also traps smoke within the body.

Hakka Chinese
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Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Yue, Wu, Southern Min, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintellegible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan and is classified as a variety of Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features, Taiwan, where Hakka

1.
Hak-kâ-fa/Hak-kâ-va (Hakka/Kejia) written in Chinese characters

Teochew dialect
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Teochew is a variety of Southern Min spoken mainly by the Teochew people in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong and by their respective diaspora around the world. It is sometimes referred to as Chiuchow, its Cantonese name, Teochew preserves many Old Chinese pronunciations and vocabulary that have been lost in some of the other modern varietie

1.
A Teochew Chinese temple in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, Indonesia on the island of Borneo

2.
Teochew

Gan Chinese
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Gan is a member of the Sinitic languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and Hakka is the closest Chinese variety to Gan in terms of phonetics. Different dialects of Gan exist, the Nanchang dialect is taken as representative. Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is an amount of mutual unintelligibility between Gan Chinese and other varie

1.
tones of Gan

2.
Gan ua (Gan) written in Chinese characters

Chinese surname
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Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames existed, namely xing or lineage names, and shi or clan names, Chinese family names are patrilineal, passed from father to

1.
Many village names in China are linked to surnames. Pictured is Jiajiayuan (贾家源), i.e. " Jia Family 's Spring", in Honggang Town, Tongshan County, Hubei

Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJ

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Chinese characters

2.
"Chinese character" in traditional (left) and simplified form (right)

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Ox scapula with oracle bone inscription

Traditional characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both s

4.
A Series of Reading workbook in Traditional Chinese used in some Elementary schools in the Philippines.

Simplified characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has

1.
Chinese characters

2.
Simplified Chinese

3.
The first batch of Simplified Characters introduced in 1935 consisted of 324 characters.

Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languag

1.
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.

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In Yiling, Yichang, Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin

Mandarin Chinese
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Mandarin is a group of related varieties of Chinese spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of Standard Mandarin or Standard Chinese, because most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as the Northern dialects. Many local Mandarin varieties are n

1.
A page of the Menggu Ziyun, covering the syllables tsim to lim

2.
Guānhuà (Mandarin) written in Chinese characters

Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as

1.
Street in Chinatown, San Francisco. Cantonese has traditionally been the dominant Chinese variant among Chinese populations in the Western world.

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Chinese dictionary from Tang dynasty. Modern Cantonese pronunciation is more similar to Middle Chinese from this era than other Chinese varieties.

Southern Min
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Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min

1.
Koa-a books, Min Nan written in Chinese characters

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Distribution of Southern Min.

Taiwanese Hokkien
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Taiwanese Hokkien, commonly known as Taiwanese, is a branched-off variant of Hokkien spoken natively by about 70% of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by the Taiwanese Hoklo people, who descended from immigrants from southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty, the Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanization is a popular orthography for this variant of Hokkien. Howev

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A selection of literary works (original and translated) in Taiwanese, in several orthographies.

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Proportion of residents aged 6 or older using Hokkien at home in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen & Matsu in 2010

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An issue of the Taiwan Church News, first published by Presbyterian missionaries in 1885. This was the first printed newspaper in Taiwan, and was written in Taiwanese, in the Latin orthography pe̍h-oē-jī.

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The Taiwanese-Japanese Dictionary, using the orthography in kana

Shanghainese
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The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, Hu language or Hu dialect, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the City of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, in English, Shanghainese sometimes refers to all Wu languages, variants and dialects, al

1.
A table of Shanghai Phonetic Symbols by Rev. J. A. Silsby

2.
Administrative divisions

Bagansiapiapi
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Bagansiapiapi or simply known as Bagan is a city in Riau province on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The city is the capital of Rokan Hilir Regency in the Riau Province and is located on the east coast of Sumatra, on the Rokan River delta across the strait west of Malacca and near Dumai. The town was populated mainly by Chinese immigrants who arr

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Ing Hok Kiong Temple in Bagansiapiapi

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Bagansiapiapi harbour during Dutch East Indies administration

Vietnamese language
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Vietnamese /ˌviɛtnəˈmiːz/ is an Austroasiatic language that originated in the north of modern-day Vietnam, where it is the national and official language. It is the language of the Vietnamese people, as well as a first or second language for the many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. As the result of Vietnamese emigration and cultural influence, Vietna

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A sign at the Hỏa Lò Prison museum in Hanoi lists rules for visitors in both Vietnamese and English.

Emperor Yao
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Emperor Yao was a legendary Chinese ruler, according to various sources, one of the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors. Yaos ancestral name is Yi Qi or Qi, clan name is Taotang, given name is Fangxun, as the son to Emperor Ku. He is also known as Tang Yao, Yaos mother has been worshipped as the goddess Yao-mu. Often extolled as the perfect and

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Emperor Yao statue in the Guanyun hall of the Yao temple in Linfen (Shanxi).

King Wen of Zhou
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King Wen of Zhou was king of Zhou during the late Shang dynasty in ancient China. Although it was his son Wu who conquered the Shang following the Battle of Muye, a large number of the hymns of the Classic of Poetry are praises to the legacy of King Wen. Some consider him the first epic hero of Chinese history, born Ji Chang, Wen was the son of Tai

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Ji Chang

Emperor Gaozu of Han
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Emperor Gaozu of Han, born Liu Bang, was the founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigning from 202 –195 BC. He was one of the few dynasty founders in Chinese history with humble origin from the peasant class, before coming to power, Liu Bang initially served as a minor patrol officer for the Qin dynasty in his hometown Pei County, within

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A portrait of Emperor Gaozu in Sancai Tuhui.

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Changling (長陵), the tomb of Emperor Gaozu in Xianyang, Shaanxi.

Chu (state)
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Chu was a hegemonic, Zhou dynasty era state. From King Wu of Chu in the early 8th century BCE, with its continued expansion Chu became a great Warring States period power. Also known as Jing, Jingchu and Shu, Chu included most of the provinces of Hubei and Hunan, along with parts of Chongqing, Guizhou, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang. For

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Bronze from the Tomb of Chu in Xichuan.

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Bronze bells from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, dated 433 BC, State of Chu.

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Tomb guardian.

Northern Wei
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During the Taihe period of Emperor Xiaowen, court advisers instituted sweeping reforms and introduced changes that eventually led to the dynasty moving its capital from Datong to Luoyang, in 494. The Tuoba renamed themselves the Yuan as a part of systematic Sinicization, towards the end of the dynasty there was significant internal dissension resul

Zheng (state)
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It was the most powerful of the vassal states at the beginning of the Eastern Zhou, and was the first state to clearly establish a code of law in its late period of 543 BCE. Its ruling house had the surname Ji, making them a branch of the Zhou royal house, prince You, known posthumously as Duke Huan of Zheng, established what would be the last bast

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Chinese states, 5th century BCE

Zhou dynasty
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The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that em

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History of China

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Population concentration and boundaries of the Western Zhou dynasty (1050–771 BC) in China

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States of the Western Zhou dynasty

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A Western Zhou bronze gui vessel, c. 1000 BC

Liu Song dynasty
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The Liu Song dynasty, also known as Former Song, was first of the four Southern Dynasties in China, succeeding the Eastern Jin and followed by the Southern Qi. The dynasty was founded by Liu Yu, whose surname together with Song forms the most commonly used name for the dynasty and this appellation is used to distinguish it from a later dynasty of t

Miao people
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The Miao is an ethnic group recognized by the government of China as one of the 55 official minority groups. Miao is a Chinese term and does not reflect the self-designations of the component groups of people, which include Hmong, Hmub, Xong, and A-Hmao. Because of the given reasons, many Miao peoples cannot communicate with each other in their mot

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Headdress of the Long-horn Miao—one of the small branches of Miao living in the 12 villages near Zhijin County (织金县), Guizhou Province of China

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Miao musicians from the Langde Miao Ethnic Village, Guizhou.

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Miao girls also from Lang De, Guizhou, awaiting their turn to perform.

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Young Miao woman in Yangshuo County.

Lu (state)
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Lu was a vassal state during the Zhou dynasty of ancient China. Founded in the 11th century BC, its rulers were from a branch of the House of Ji that ruled the Zhou dynasty. The first duke was Boqin, a son of the Duke of Zhou, Lu was the home state of Confucius as well as Mozi, and as such has an outsized cultural influence among the states of the

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A remnant of the city wall of Lu's capital city, surviving on the outskirts of Qufu

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Lu, 5th century BC

Zhurong
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Zhurong, also known as Chongli, is an important personage in Chinese mythology and Chinese folk religion. According to the Huainanzi and the texts of Mozi and his followers, Zhurong is a god of fire. The Shanhaijing gives alternative genealogies for Zhurong, including descent from both the Yan Emperor and Yellow Emperor, some sources associate Zhur

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Zhurong riding two dragons, depicted in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, 1597 edition

Emperor Hui of Han
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Emperor Hui of Han was the second emperor of the Han Dynasty in China. He was the son of the first Han emperor, Han Gaozu. He is generally remembered as a weak character dominated by his mother, Empress Dowager Lü, personally kind and generous and he tried to protect Ruyi, Prince Yin of Zhao, his younger half-brother, from being murdered by Empress

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Anling (安陵), the tomb of Emperor Hui, in Xianyang, Shaanxi

Emperor Wen of Han
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Emperor Wen of Han was the fifth emperor of the Han Dynasty of ancient China. His personal name was Liu Heng, Liu Heng was a son of Emperor Gao of Han and Consort Bo, later empress dowager. When Emperor Gao suppressed the rebellion of Dai, he made Liu Heng Prince of Dai and his reign brought a much needed political stability that laid the groundwor

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The emperor is seated and listens intently to his official Yuan Ang at Shanglin Garden.

Emperor Jing of Han
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Emperor Jing of Han, personal name Liu Qi, was the sixth emperor of the Chinese Han dynasty from 157 to 141 BC. His reign saw the limiting of the power of the feudal kings/princes which resulted in the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154 BC, Emperor Jing managed to crush the revolt and princes were thereafter denied rights to appoint ministers for

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Portrait of Han Jingdi in Han Yang Ling Mausoleum

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Tomb figures in the mausoleum at Xianyang, near Xi'an

Emperor Wu of Han
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Emperor Wu of Han, born Liu Che, courtesy name Tong, was the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty of China, ruling from 141–87 BC. His reign lasted 54 years — a record not broken until the reign of the Kangxi Emperor more than 1,800 years later. His reign resulted in vast territorial expansion, development of a strong and centralized state resulting

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Clockwise from top left: The Inner Victoria Harbour, Statue of Queen Victoria, the Fisgard Lighthouse, Neo-Baroque architecture of the British Columbia Parliament Buildings, The British Columbia Parliament Buildings, The Empress Hotel, and The Christ Church Cathedral.

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Downtown Victoria 's Skyline at twilight in November 2009.

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Wawadit'la, also known as Mungo Martin House, a Kwakwaka'wakw "big house", with totem pole. Built by Chief Mungo Martin in 1953. Located at Thunderbird Park in Victoria, British Columbia, in the background is the Royal BC Museum.